Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

Think small. Alot

Yes. I know. We are always being told. ‘Be all you can become’. ‘The sky is the limit’. ‘You are the only obstacle to what you can become in life.’. ‘Aim at the sun/moon and you might fall among the stars’. Alot of crap.

How about we, just for once, look at these concepts from another angle. A REALISTIC angle. Putting everything into consideration. Depending on acumen. Not luck.

The true measure of success and achievement lies in self-discovery. Finding out what YOU can do, and doing it the best way possible.

In thinking ‘big’, alot of people find out what CAN BE DONE, and try to do it, ignoring their own limitation. Allow me to indulge your mind and step on your ego for 5 minutes (hoping it is not as fragile and plastic as many Kenyan egos are). Look at life in a different angle. For 5 minutes.

I have met and read about alot of people who are ‘creating their own facebook’, who ‘have a better mPesa’, who ‘are the next BIG thing’, who ‘are the African Google’, who ‘will become the paypal of Africa’. Etc. The list is endless. Good stuff. Positive stuff. But is it REAL? Are these people/we thinking way above our cut? Are we attempting to do 100 MPH, using a Vitz?

Face it. Not everyone is destined to be great. I have met a lot of foot-soldiers who think they are generals. A lot of born-to-sweep people who will tell you, ‘this sweeping job is just temporary’.

‘Salim stop discouraging people! Let people dream!’, I hear you. Actually, the purpose of this post is to encourage you to CHANGE your tactic, to achieve your end. The Kompressing Coder end. So read along. There is a REAL confusion between the noble concept of ‘thinking big’ and the vice of ‘thinking greedy’. People look at the DESIRED END and totally ignore the ‘little boring’ nitty-gritty in the MEANS.

When I listen to alot of people talk about what they want to achieve, I sometimes engage them on a technical analysis to see if they really understand what it takes to do that. Sadly, most, when weighed and measured, are found wanting. Thinking beyond their knowledge and ability, just because they read about it somewhere or on a Twit.

Take an example 1: Creating your own Gmail.

The general thinking is simplistic. Get a Unix box, setup an SMTP Server (Exim/Postfix/qMail), some POP3/IMAP server (Courier/Cyrus), Throw in Procmail and Spamassassin. A  few 4TB Nas drives. Server Done. Get a python/php Mail system + a good MySQL/Postgres Db and register a domain. KenyaFreeMail.com. Done.

The REAL picture, is a little more daunting. Very many SMALL details come to play. How will attachments be stored and hashed? Are we avoiding duplicates by ensuring the SAME attachment batch is saved-onces and multi-referenced across forwards and reply-with-attachment convos? Is the Unix Kernel optimized to ensure maximum performance per node? Are you using a semblance of the Google SRE Standards to make sure you are ALWAYS online? What happens when you reach your 1, 089, 666th user?

Take an example 2: Creating your own Facebook.

Again. Thinking beyond the product. The user experience and user-fatigue management is King. Alot of people I have met have concepts on how Facebook can be monetized. But, trust me, FB would not be where it was if it was taken as an Ad Space. Think about the photos. The videos. User data and messages.

You wan to build your own Facebook. Have you tested your DB with just 10M users each uploading just 10 photos a week. A remote zombified simulation of actual events? That is just WRITE. How about READ? Each photo has 4 thumbnails. Make that 10*4. Think storage. What gives you more optimization? Storing the Images as real files or DB data. Are you going to use BLOB or a Base64 encoding of the Image if DB? have you considered CDNs?

Take an example 3: Creating your own Mxit/2Go/Mig33/eBuddy.

One of the most interesting and VIRGIN areas in Africa is the Mobile. People are still touching themselves over MMT, but the real goldmine is, as I blogged last week, is on Mobile Data. I will prove this in the coming weeks.

So, want to create your own Mxit? Wonderful! What server will you run? How will you handle conversations? Default XML Stanzas or Custom WBXML? Are you going to create your own content channel-bots (reliable but static) or hire humans (dynamic and updated but unreliable, needy and emotional). What about device fragmentation? Is the system ubiquitous (access-mode independent)?

From personal experience and in conclusion, my point is: don’t think ‘alphabet’, if you haven’t grasped the shape, sound and feel of letter ‘A’ and letter ‘a’. The human mind is a very powerful tool. Control it before it controls you. The school of thought that ‘you can do anything’ often renders one actionless. You end up doing NOTHING. Better think SMALL and do SOMETHING. Then build up from your small victories.

Your end might be Big. But looking at the FINAL picture is really overwhelming. In Concept and resource.

Think small. Now. Time is on your side. Small + Small = BIG. And that, boys and girls, is what I call the Erection Model. the ripple model.

Back to code…

Wazi